Surgical and analytical microscopes have been supported in the past usually by a system of rather heavy arms attached to a support of some type at one end and at an opposite end to the microscope. The microscope is usually positioned by a clinitian grasping the microscope with both hands each time it had to be relocated during a surgical or analytical procedure. The microscope usually weights somewhere between ten and more pounds and the support arms are each relatively heavy. Thus, it requires some effort on the part of the clinitian to accurately position the microscope due to frictional resistance between the movable parts. Also, the clinitian has to give up use of both hands while moving the microscope during the surgical or analytical procedure.